35. Taylor Faircloth, interview with author, 17 March 2003.
36. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 81.
37. Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 22.
38. “Story of Attempted Drowning Called False, Angers Harper Lee,” Tuscaloosa News, 25 September 1997.
39. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 6.
40. Ibid., 77.
Chapter 2: “Apart People”
1. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 144.
2. Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 1999), 26.
3. Ibid., 23.
4. Molly Haskell, “Unmourned Losses, Unsettled Claims” (book review), The New York Times, 12 June 1988, 1.
5. Clarke, Capote: A Biography, 14.
6. Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.
7. George Thomas Jones, Happenings in Old Monroeville (Monroeville, Ala.: Bolton Newspapers, 1999), 126.
8. Rudisill, with Simmons, Capote, 193.
9. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”
10. Anne Taylor Fleming, “The Private World of Truman Capote, New York Times, 16 July 1978.
11. Patricia Burstein, “Tiny, Yes, but a Terror? Do Not Be Fooled by Truman Capote in Repose,” People, 10 May 1976, 12–17.
12. Rudisill, with Simmons, Capote, 241–42.
13. Eugene Walter (as told to Katherine Clark), Milking the Moon (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 40.
14. Gloria Steinem, “‘Go Right Ahead and Ask Me Anything’ (And So She Did): An Interview with Truman Capote,” McCall’s, November 1967, 76–77, 148–52, 154.
15. Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb, 70.
16. Burstein, “Tiny, Yes, but a Terror?” 12–17.
17. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 18.
18. Roy Newquist, Counterpoint (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 407.
19. Marianne M. Moates, A Bridge of Childhood: Truman Capote’s Southern Years (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 116.
20. Harper Lee, “A Letter from Harper Lee,” O Magazine, July 2006, 152.
21. Truman Capote papers, Box 7, folders 11–14, New York Public Library. Nelle begins her notes on the research for Capote’s In Cold Blood: “These Notes Are Dedicated to the Author of The Fire and the Flame.…”
22. Newquist, Counterpoint, 407.
23. 1930 United States Federal Census, National Archives and Records Administration, T626, 2,667 rolls, Washington, D.C.; also, George Thomas Jones, letter to author, 16 March 2004.
24. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to the author, 18 September 2002; also, Jones, letter to the author, 8 October 2002.
25. Skinner, interview with author.
26. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 12.
27. George Plimpton, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997), 14.
28. Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948; reprint, New York: Vintage/Random House, 1994), 132.
Chapter 3: First Hints of To Kill a Mockingbird
1. Moates, A Bridge of Childhood, 169.
2. Claude Nunnelly, interview with author, 7 December 2003.
3. Jones, “Courthouse Lawn,” 140.
4. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 25 April 2003.
5. Sue Philipp, interview with author, 9 March 2004.
6. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 25 April 2003.
7. Ibid.
8. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”
9. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 25 April 2003.
10. Ibid.; also, Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb, 41.
11. Harper Lee, “Springtime,” Monroe Journal, 1 April 1937.
12. “Harper Lee Began Writing in Childhood, Sister Says,” Alabama Journal, 20 November 1963.
13. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”
14. Dr. Wanda Bigham, letter to author, 9 April 2004. Dr. Bigham is a former president of Huntingdon College.
15. Vernon Hendrix, “Firm Gives Books to Monroe County,” Montgomery Advertiser, 23 December 1962.
16. Journal of the House of Representatives of Alabama, 1935, House Bill 191, 418–19.
17. Jane Kansas, “To Kill a Mockingbird & Harper Lee: Why the Site?” http://mockingbird.chebucto.org/why.html. Kansas offers hard-to-find anecdotes about the Lees.
18. Alice Lee, speech presented at “Maud McLure Kelly Award Luncheon” (award given to Miss Alice Lee, Mobile, Ala., 18 July 2003).
19. Ibid.
20. Elizabeth Otts, “Lady Lawyers Prepare Homecoming Costumes,” Crimson White, 26 November 1946, 14.
21. Catherine Helms, letter to author, 14 June 2003.
22. “Tests,” The Huntress (Huntingdon College), 11 October 1944, 1.
23. Jeanne Foote North, letter to author, 17 February 2003.
24. Ibid.
25. Catherine Helms, letter to author, 18 June 2003.
26. Mary Tomlinson, interview with author, 30 April 2003.
27. Catherine Helms, interview with author, 29 March 2003.
28. Tomlinson, interview with author, 30 April 2003.
29. Tina Rood, letter to author, 16 February 2003.
30. Catherine Helms, letter to author, 20 June 2003.
31. Mary Nxell Atherton, interview with author, 25 February 2003.
32. Harper Lee, “Nightmare,” The Prelude (Huntingdon College literary magazine) (Spring 1945): 11.
33. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 118.
34. Harper Lee, “A Wink at Justice,” The Prelude (Huntingdon College literary magazine) (Spring 1945): 14–15.
35. Ann Richards Somers, interview with author, 14 March 2003.
36. Florence Moore Stikes, letter to author, 26 April 2003.
Chapter 4: Rammer Jammer
1. Barbara Moore, letter to author, 13 December 2003.
2. The Corolla 1946 (University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa yearbook), “Chi Omega,” 231.
3. Polly Terry, interview with author, 31 January 2003.
4. Mary Anne Berryman, interview with author, 5 February 2003.
5. Jane Benton Davis, interview with author, 8 March 2004.
6. Mary Anne Berryman, letter to author, 3 February 2003.
7. Ibid.
8. Benton Davis, interview with author, 8 March 2004.
9. Moore, letter to author, 13 December 2003.
10. Harper Lee, “Caustic Comment,” Crimson White, 16 August 1946, 2.
11. Ibid.
12. Mildred H. Jacobs, interview with author, 7 December 2003.
13. John T. Hamner, “This Mockingbird Is a Happy Singer,” Montgomery Advertiser, 7 October 1960.
14. Lee, “Caustic Comment,” 2.
15. Harper Lee, “Alabama Authors Write of Slaves, Women, GIs,” Crimson White, 1 October 1946, 2.
16. Ernest Maygarden, letter to author, 3 December 2003.
17. Hamner, “Happy Singer.”
18. “‘Little Nelle’ Heads Ram, Maps Lee’s Strategy,” Crimson White, 8 October 1946, 1.
19. Elise Sanguinetti, interview with author, 5 November 2005.
20. Harper Lee, “Now Is the Time for All Good Men” (a one-act play), Rammer Jammer, October 1946, 7, 17–18.
21. Winzola McLendon, “Nobody Mocks ‘Mockingbird’ Author: Sales Are Proof of Pudding,” Washington Post, 17 November 1960, B12.
22. Carney Dobbs, letter to author, 5 December 2002.
23. Dan Meador, interview with author, 9 March 2004.
24. Mary Lee Stapp, interview with author, 11 March 2004.
25. Jane Williams, interview with author, 12 March 2004.
26. Marion Goode Shirkey, interview with author, 23 January 2003.
27. Olive Landon, interview with author, 16 March 2004.
28. Jane Williams, interview with author, 12 March 2004.
29. “Miss Nelle Lee Chosen to Attend Oxford,” Monroe Journal, 29 April 1948, 1.
/> 30. Roy E. Hranicky, interview with author, 6 December 2004.
31. “Programme for the 1948 Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies Summer School: European Civilization in the Twentieth Century.” Oxford University Archives (CE 3/384), Bodleian Library, Oxford, England.
32. Marja Mills, “A Life Apart: Harper Lee, The Complex Woman Behind ‘A Delicious Mystery,’” Chicago Tribune, 13 September 2002.
33. Ibid.
34. John Forney, a fellow University of Alabama alumnus—and, like Nelle, a “Campus Character” in the college yearbook—met Nelle at Penn Station and recounted this anecdote to friends.
Chapter 5: “Willing to Be Lucky”
1. E. B. White, Here Is New York (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949).
2. “Rubbish in Manhattan Streets” (letter to the editor), New York Times, 11 May 1949.
3. At the November 8, 1962, Mount Holyoke 125-year anniversary commemoration, Nelle received an honorary doctorate. As part of the ceremony, her bookstore experience was mentioned. Most sketches of her adult life begin with her working at an airline.
4. Maryon Pittman Allen (former U.S. senator from Alabama), letter to author, 30 November 2003.
5. Olga Lee Ryan, letter to author, 22 April 2003.
6. Mills, “A Life Apart.”
7. Walter, Milking the Moon, 93.
8. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”
9. Harper Lee, “Christmas to Me,” McCall’s, December 1961, 63.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. “Alumna Wins Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Fiction,” University of Alabama Alumni News (May–June 1961).
15. Nelle Harper Lee to Leo R. Roberts, 26 January 1960, Archives and Information Center, Huntingdon College Library, Huntingdon Collection.
16. Carter Wilson, interview with author, 19 November 2004. Wilson was one of Tay Hohoff’s young authors in the early 1960s.
17. Tay Hohoff, “We Get a New Author,” Literary Guild Book Club Magazine, August 1960, 3–4.
18. Ibid.
19. The Author and His Audience, 175th anniversary J. B. Lippincott. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1967), 28.
20. Ibid.
21. Hohoff, “New Author,” 3–4.
22. Newquist, Counterpoint, 412.
23. Hazel Rowley, “Mockingbird Country,” The Australian’s Review of Books, April 1999.
24. “Negro Held for Attacking a Woman,” Monroe Journal, 9 November 1933, 1.
25. 1930 United States Federal Census, National Archives and Records Administration, T626, 2,667 rolls, Washington, D.C.
26. State of Alabama v. Walter Lett, Monroe County Courthouse, Monroeville, Ala.
27. “Lett Negro Saved from Electric Chair,” Monroe Journal, 12 July 1934, 1.
28. C. E. Johnson, M.D., to Hon. B. M. Miller, governor, 20 July 1934, Death Cases (Executions, Reprieves and Commutations) by Gov. B. M. Miller, Alabama State Archives, Montgomery, Ala.
29. G. M. Taylor, M.D., to Hon. B. M. Miller, governor, 23 July 1934, Alabama State Archives, Montgomery, Ala.
30. “Negro law,” not taught in any law school or codified in any statute book, was a blur that whipped past black defendants. Part show, part legal twaddle, it rested, wrote Southern historian Leon Litwack in Trouble in Mind, “largely on custom, racial assumptions, the unquestioned authority of whites, and a heavy dose of paternalism.” The tone was set for a case involving a Negro when a judge appointed an attorney for the accused. Usually counsel for the defense was a newly minted lawyer, a beginner like A. C. Lee was in 1919.
31. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 5–6.
32. Truman Capote, letter to Alvin and Marie Dewey, 12 August 1960. In Gerald Clarke, ed., Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (New York: Random House, 2004), 290.
33. Capote, letter to Alvin Dewey III, 4 July 1964, in Clarke, ed., Too Brief, 401.
34. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 6.
35. Phoebe Adams, Review of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, The Atlantic Monthly, August 1960, 98–99.
36. “Harper Lee,” Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center, Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2004.
37. W. J. Stuckey, The Pulitzer Prize Novels: A Critical Backward Look (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 194.
38. “Harper Lee Gets Scroll, Tells of Book,” Birmingham News, 12 November 1961.
39. Hal Boyle, “Harper Lee Running Scared, Getting Fat on Heels of Success,” Birmingham News, 15 March 1963.
40. The Author and His Audience, 29.
41. Sue Philipp, interview with author, 9 March 2004.
42. The Author and His Audience, 28.
43. McLendon, “Nobody Mocks ‘Mockingbird’ Author,” B12.
44. The Author and His Audience, 28.
45. Dr. Grady H. Nunn, letter to author, 1 December 2003.
46. The Author and His Audience, 29.
47. Kay Anderson, letter to author, 15 March 2004. As a student at Monroe County High School, Anderson heard Harper Lee tell the story of throwing the manuscript out the window, which Alice Lee denied. Several other former students heard the same story over the years. The “for better or for worse” remark is from Newquist, Counterpoint, 405.
48. Sarah Countryman, interview with author, 9 March 2004.
49. Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb, 44.
50. “Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain,” 16 November 1959, New York Times, 7.
51. Clarke, Capote: A Biography, 319.
Chapter 6: “See NL’s Notes”
1. George Plimpton, “The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel,” 16 January 1966, New York Times, http://nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/home/capote-interview.html.
2. Capote papers, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, box 7, folders 11–14. These folders contained dated but not numbered typewritten notes by Harper Lee.
3. Alvin A. Dewey, as told to Dolores Hope, “The Clutter Case: 25 Years Later KBI Agent Recounts Holcomb Tragedy,” Garden City Telegram, 10 November 1984, compact disc.
4. Dewey, in Hope, Garden City, ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Clarke, Capote: A Biography, 322.
9. Harold Nye, interview with author, 30 December 2002.
10. “Scene of the Crime: Twenty-Five Years Later, Holcomb, Kansas, Remembers ‘In Cold Blood.’” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 11 November 1984, 33.
11. “Scene of the Crime,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 11 November 1984, 33.
12. Capote papers, New York Public Library, box 7, folders 11–14, 26 December 1959.
13. Clarke, Capote: A Biography, 323.
14. Cliff Hope, interview with author, 5 April 2005.
15. Ibid.
16. Holly Hope, Garden City: Dreams in a Kansas Town (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 61.
17. Dewey, in Hope, “The Clutter Case.”
18. Dolores Hope, letter to author, 8 June 2005.
19. Plimpton, “The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel.”
20. Holly Hope, interview with author, 17 February 2005.
21. Harold Nye, interview with author, 30 December 2002.
22. Capote papers, New York Public Library, box 7, folder 8. Folder 8 contains some of Capote’s notes.
23. Dewey, in Hope, “The Clutter Case.”
24. Plimpton, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends.
25. Capote papers, New York Public Library, box 7, folder 8.
26. Ibid., folders 11–14; 11 January 1960.
27. Capote papers, Library of Congress, box 4, Ac 14, 421; 11 January 1960.
28. Capote papers, New York Public Library, box 7, folders 11–14; 11 January 1960.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Newquist, Counterpoint, 407.
<
br /> 35. Truman Capote, letter to Cecil Beaton, 21 January 1960. In Clarke, Too Brief a Treat, 276–77.
36. Elon Torrence, interview with author, 6 May 2005. Mr. Torrence is a former Associated Press reporter who attended the trial.
37. Capote papers, New York Public Library, box 7, folders 11–14, 22 March 1960.
38. Ibid., 19 March 1960.
39. Elon Torrence, interview with author, 6 May 2005.
40. “America’s Worst Crime in Twenty Years,” Richard Eugene Hickock, as told to Mack Nations, Male, December 1961, 30–31, 76–83.
41. Capote papers, New York Public Library, box 7, folders 11–14, (no date).
42. Mark Besten, “Too Hot for You? Take a Dip in Cold Blood,” Louisville Eccentric Observer, 1 August 2001, 16.
Chapter 7: Mockingbird Takes Off
1. Capote, letter to David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones, early June 1960, in Clarke, Too Brief a Treat, 284.
2. Newquist, Counterpoint, 407.
3. Untitled item, Monroe Journal, 16 June 1960.
4. Glendy Culligan, “Listen to That Mockingbird,” Washington Post, 3 July 1960, E6.
5. Frank H. Lyell, “Violence in Dixie” (review) Seed in the Wind, by Leon Odell, New York Times, 31 July 1960, BR23.
6. Capote, letter to Alvin and Marie Dewey, 10 October 1960, in Clarke, Too Brief a Treat, 299.
7. “Mocking Bird Call,” Newsweek, 9 January 1961, 83.
8. Tay Hohoff, Cats and Other People (New York: Popular Library, 1973), 195.
9. Max York, “Throngs Greet Monroe Writer,” Montgomery Advertiser, 13 September 1960.
10. Vernon Hendrix, “Author’s Father Proud of ‘Mockingbird’ Fame,” Montgomery Advertiser, 7 August 1960.
11. Capote, letter to Andrew Lyndon, 6 September 1960, in Clarke, Too Brief a Treat, 291.
12. Albin Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59; Novelist of Style and Clarity,” New York Times, 28 August 1984.
13. “Mocking Bird Call,” 83.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Unsigned letter to Harper Lee from a secretary in Williams’s office, 7 January 1961, Annie Laurie Williams papers, Columbia University, box 86.
17. Charles Ray Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.
18. Nelle Harper Lee to Leo R. Roberts, 26 January 1960, Archives and Information Center, Huntingdon College Library, Huntingdon Collection.
19. Frances Kiernan, “No Apologies Necessary,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 2001.
20. Hendrix, “Author’s Father Proud.”
I Am Scout Page 18